From the military-industrial complex to the industrial health complex: the geopolitics of national states in technical-scientific production to combat the new Coronavirus

• Grant number: 22/00180-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2022
• End date: June 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography - Human Geography
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Mendes Antas Jr
• Grantee: Ricardo Mendes Antas Jr
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The importance that the production of medical-hospital supplies has acquired since the mid-twentieth century culminated in the structuring of industrial health complexes in some countries, including Brazil, becoming one of the most important sectors in capitalist economies due to the fact that it is a major inducer of technical-scientific production with value-added industrial application. This productive specialization has gradually assumed a strategic position for countries to the point of becoming an important component of contemporary geopolitics. The case of the COVID-19 pandemic is paradigmatic to understand how the health industrial complex is central in the current political relations between national states and also with the corporations involved in these industrial productions. (AU)